First pub­lished 3/28/2014 

East­er is just around the cor­ner! This is the time of year when you will find most Ukraini­ans hunched over their fresh eggs, wax, can­dles, kistkas, and dyes mak­ing their intri­cate East­er eggs. Ukraini­ans call these eggs Pysanky.

Cre­at­ing these lit­tle works of art requires a lot of time and PATIENCE. Not only are there mul­ti­ple steps to be tak­en for each egg, but you can’t erase a mis­take and go back­wards — and there are mil­lions of ways to crack your egg in the process! Because of this, I’m one of the few Ukraini­ans who rarely par­tic­i­pates in this annu­al under­tak­ing. It does­n’t mat­ter how slow or how care­ful I am, my eggs always break! Even the ones that make it all the way to the var­nish­ing stage get smashed or dropped by me or some­one else.

It’s too bad that I can’t sit down long enough to make Pysanky because it’s fun to go back and see everyone’s eggs over the years. Each has their own style! For exam­ple, my sis­ter Lesya’s eggs are real­ly cool and unique, while my aun­t’s eggs are very intri­cate and tra­di­tion­al. Just recent­ly my mom pulled out some of my Babcha’s eggs that were 20–30 years old!

Here is a short video one of my sis­ters cre­at­ed a LONG time ago!  Rather than me explain­ing every step, watch the video 🙂